


Romance Partner

by KLStarre



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fantasy High: Sophomore Year, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 05:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21266081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLStarre/pseuds/KLStarre
Summary: Riz regrets every lie he's ever told.(Or, what happened between Riz's capture by the mirror and Riz's rescue)





	Romance Partner

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the third episode of Fantasy High: Sophomore Year!

Riz Gukgak didn’t scream as he was pulled into the mirror, and he didn’t know why. It would have made sense to. A creature born of, what, his lies? his insecurities? was going to kill him and he was never going to see his friends again or be able to tell them what he had figured out, but he still didn’t scream. He’d never been good at asking for help.

The skeleton boy’s fingers were cold around his ankles and as much as he kicked and clawed at the floor they didn’t seem to loosen. For a second he managed to get a claw hooked in between two of the wooden boards that made up the floor and pulled as hard as he fucking could but the skeleton boy yanked and the claw ripped out and stuck there, vertically, as Riz’s vision flashed red from the pain of it.

He tried to scream. Finally, he tried to scream, mouth open and still fighting back with all his strength, but all that came out was a soft hiss of air and then the room around him disappeared.

At first, everything was black. The grip around his ankles had been released, and the pain in his fingers had vanished, but his heart was still racing and he felt a single trickle of sweat run its way down the back of his neck. He didn’t move. He had already fucked up badly enough by moving and he didn’t know where he was and he wasn’t going to fall into another trap. He wasn’t supposed to fall into _any _traps, but now wasn’t the time to think about that. Now was the time to –

Everything filled with light. Or – that wasn’t right, exactly. Everything turned to a stark shade of white, and he was lying on his stomach in an empty, infinite room. He continued to lie there for thirty seconds. A minute. Surely something would happen. He had adventured enough to know that _something _had to happen.

Two minutes. Three. Nothing. No sign of…Baron, he guessed. That was something else that now wasn’t the time to think about.

Four minutes. Five. He was counting seconds now. It had been stupid not to have been counting seconds the whole time, but also who knew how time worked in a mirror? This was getting ridiculous. If there was a trap – a trap besides being trapped in a mirror – it should have been sprung by now.

Riz Gukgak sat up.

Baron from the Baronies was in front of him. He hadn’t been during the five minutes that Riz had been lying on his stomach, and now he was. A skeleton boy, sitting cross-legged, wearing clothes just similar enough to Riz’s own for it to feel like he was being mocked.

“Hello, Riz Gukgak. Are you ready to be nice to your roëmænce partnær?”

A heavy dread settled in Riz’s chest. He said nothing. Everything he had said had made this worse.

“Riz Gukgak? Don’t be rude.”

Baron’s voice had been playful outside the mirror. It wasn’t anymore.

“What do you – what do you want?” The part of Riz’s mind that always disconnected when he was in danger thought, idly, that he was glad none of his friends were here to hear him stammer. Instinctually, he reached for his gun, but it wasn’t there. Of course.

“Make me real, Riz Gukgak. Make your roëmænce partnær real.” A window appeared out of nowhere in the empty whiteness beside Baron, and it took Riz a moment to process what he saw through it, but when he did, his heart sank. That was his office. Empty. He could see the scratch marks he had left on the wooden floors, but the disconnected claw was gone. He had desperately, desperately hoped that he had been Baron’s only tie to the real world.

“Your name is Baron.” Riz said, trying his best to keep one eye on the skeletal goblin and one eye on the part of his office he could see through the window. A faint outline of a body appeared in the center of the office. There were no details, but Riz noticed, with the investigative skills of a teenager who had only ever wanted to be a detective, that it was exactly his size.

“That was already true, Riz Gukgak. A name won’t make me real. Don’t you want your roëmænce partnær to be real?”

No. Riz Gukgak definitively did not want his romance partner to be real. “Our first date was – we got coffee.” Riz didn’t know what people did on dates. He was desperately wishing he had listened more closely to Kristen, or Gorgug, or, at this point, even Fig’s stories about her hospital escapades. As he spoke, the outline on the floor filled in slightly. Those were his ears. He had never seen ears so clearly his ears. He jerked forward, almost involuntarily, and suddenly Baron was standing up. Riz hadn’t seen him move, but he was standing up in front of him. He had claws now, growing straight from the bone. Claws that looked like Riz’s claws.

“Do I like coffee, Riz Gukgak?”

This was not how Riz wanted to die. “You love coffee. You ordered for me, because you thought you knew what I would like. You ordered exactly the right thing. And then we talked for – we talked for hours.”

The outline filled in as he spoke, a patina of green spreading over it. Its limbs were still faint but the torso, the torso and the head, fuck –

“What did we talk about, Riz Gukgak?”

Riz did not know how he responded. He talked for minutes, which bled into what felt like hours, until his throat was hoarse. The outline became less transparent, more real. Except for the limbs. Except for the neck. With every word he said, the angles of not-Riz’s joints became more unnatural. With every word he said, Baron’s claws grew, and so did his smile.

Riz ran out of things to say just as a briefcase materialized next to the body and just as Baron sat down again. The silence echoed. Riz’s throat was hoarse. _Please_, let it have been enough. This was not how Riz wanted to die. (The same part of Riz’s brain that had been worried about what his friends would have thought wondered briefly about how he _did _want to die. The answer was not alone. Not like his father.)

“I love you, Riz Gukgak,” Baron said, leaning forward.

Riz lost consciousness.

∞

Riz awoke once again in darkness, shaking, more thankful than he’d ever been for his darkvision as he looked around and processed that he was four feet off the ground. And then the pain hit. His shoulders, his hips, his wrists, his ankles, there were manacles holding him up and it felt like they were pulling his body apart. He closed his eyes as if that would help.

It didn’t.

Opened them again. Breathed in, fought to keep from whimpering as it pulled on his shoulders, breathed out.

He was alive. That was what was important right now. He was alive. And, almost definitely, back in the real world. Only the real world could hurt this damn much – another muffled gasp as he breathed out.

The room. The room the room the room focus on the room. He looked around. He looked around again. He breathed in, he clenched his teeth, he looked around again, he breathed out. He swung, gently, in the darkness, and thought of his mom.

He tried to count seconds, and lost count after a cough around eight minutes and twenty-three seconds sent him swinging wildly and it felt like his shoulders were about to pop out of their sockets and he didn’t scream didn’t scream didn’t scream. His friends would notice he was missing. His friends would notice something was wrong, and they would find him, and they would kill Baron and the Nightmare King and free Riz and they would laugh about it later. (The same part of his brain that knew how he wanted to die wondered if his friends would notice, actually, or if they would really care all that much).

At long last, the door creaked open, and Riz lifted his head to look at whoever it was straight-on, ignoring the throbbing in his shoulders that he had somehow started to get used to. It was amazing, what you could get used to.

A shadow came through the door before whoever opened it, and he saw horns, but also something strapped to the person’s back; a guitar, maybe, a bass guitar, it was Fig, Fig was here and she was going to Dimension Door them both the fuck out of there and Fig stepped through the door and Riz’s strained “Fig!” had already escaped his mouth before he saw her eyes.

Before he saw that her eyes were not her own. Before she tilted her head at him, confused, and then nodded like she had figured something out. Before she drew a knife he hadn’t known she owned and stepped toward him.

“Please,” Riz found himself staying, instead of “took you long enough to get here.” “Please, I’m your friend. Please.” And then, as she drew closer, with increasing panic, “Dispel magic! Dispel magic! Fig! Fuck! Please I’m sorry whatever I did I’m sorry!”

(The same part of his brain that thought Riz’s friends wouldn’t come thought to itself, smugly, that this was rather ironic.) Finally, Riz screamed.


End file.
